Sadly a GoDaddy User

I use GoDaddy for a few domains and some SSL. Every time I need to set something up, it is like pulling teeth. First you’ve got to get through four layers of sales pitches, cross sells, and upsells. Then you finally get to the admin UI’s. Not the UI, the UI’s. Each one of them appears to have been designed by team with a different design philosophy. To boot the doc’s appear to have been written by someone that never actual used the UI they’re prescribing the use of.

SSL Domain Verification

Here’s the problem. You’ve got 2 domains to issue SSL certificates on. Let’s say

• foo.com
• staging.foo.com

According to the doc’s you need to put a TXT record on “dzc.” + your domain. OK, so that would be

• dzc.foo.com TXT=”fooVal1″
• dzc.staging.foo.com TXT=”fooVal2″

Great, looks good. What? Why is it that only one SSL domain is validated and the cert issued? We’ll, it’s your fault for following the directions.

The rub is that all subdomain TXT values must be placed on the root domain. Awesome. Does everyone in control of a subdomain have control of the root? Certainly not. Hopefully you learned this by trial and error.

Hope it Helps

I’ve jotted down these little ditties as time and time again, I have to experiment with GoDaddy settings as following them to the letter rarely works. GoDaddy, please read your own docs!